December 10, 2006

It's time for the annual "Year in Ideas" issue of the NYT Magazine. It's always fun to page through this to see which things catch my eye. Here they are:

The Ambient Walkman. I would love to have one of these, at least if the sound was pleasing enough, if it would work to mellow out distracting room noise in a café or office or waiting room. Currently, I have to play music when I don't want to listen to music, and I don't want to be cut off from the feeling of the room.The Beer Gut Flask. It's just so wrong. See it here -- where the models almost make it look attractive.

Bicycle helmets put you at risk. But save your cheers, libertarians. It's not because the biker takes more responsibility without a helmet. It's about the drivers.

9 comments:

I think they are interviewing the wrong people for that hyperopia study. For one thing, isn't the sample biased if you confine it to alumni? My wife got kicked out of college, and I got suspended, for lack of academic application (mostly boys in her case, and liquor in mine). I don't wish I had partied even more, and neither does she.

Years ago, when I lived in in Hong Kong, the government's anti-littering campaign plastered posters all over the colony featuring a suitably suspicious pair of eyes above the slogan "Hong Kong is Watching." No matter how you viewed the poster, it seemed the eyes were watching you. I tried to get a decent copy to frame, but was unsuccessful.

With regard to the "hungry is smarter" idea, I always thought that had to do with a full stomach diverting blood from the brain to digest food. So this idea isn't really new, though my rationale for it may have been a wive's tale.

I surprised you skipped so quickly over the "Cohabitation is bad for women's health" article. Although I doubt many people are surprised that women gain weight after entering into a long-term relationship, the article nicely demonstrated two Althousian insights.

First, that any study that involves women must be spun to be favorable to women. Women, we're told, don't gain weight because, now that they're in a relationship, they can relax their nutty too-skinny body image. Rather, they're "forced" to make "unhealthy" diet choices.

Second, the war against fat really is aesthetic rather than scientific. Without presenting any other information, we are expected to conclude that any weight gain is bad.

Perhaps the weight gain is to enhance the chance of conception and trap the guy. LOL

I was expecting the old saw about higher domestic violence incidence in noncommitted relationships. Pleasantly surprised to find she just gained weight; better fat than bruised or dead. Maybe the higher oxytocin hormone levels from sleeping together increase appetite or promote weight retention?

I just have to share the eyeballs item with the Samizdata blog. They dislike ubiquitous surveillance cameras for supposed crime prevention, at which it fails.